Edward Snowden: Google, Facebook disclosures deceiving

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden slapped back Monday at companies like Google and Facebook, saying in an online chat that they were “misleading” in their denials of knowledge of participation in the PRISM program.

Snowden, who has exiled himself in Hong Kong to avoid arrest for revealing classified details of government surveillance programs, spent more than two hours answering questions from Guardian readers and reporters. It was unclear where he was located.

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Snowden alleges the NSA has a direct line to capture, store and search virtually all online communications and activities of Americans as well as foreigners who interact via the Internet with Americans. NSA computers, he said, gather it through a classified arrangement with top technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.

On Monday, the 29-year-old former computer specialist at Booz Allen Hamilton seized on the fact that all of the companies named in documents he released about PRISM use similar phrasing in distancing themselves.

“Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies,” Snowden wrote in response to a question about those corporate reactions to his bombshells. “As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we’re finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.”

While some of the companies have modified their denials, they have done so, in fact, to make even more explicit and adamant assertions that they don’t give the NSA carte blanche access. Snowden’s leaks have, however, led to some of the firms clamoring for the ability to reveal more about what they are asked for and what they provide the government in terms of user data.

When asked to “define in as much detail as you can what ‘direct access’ means,” Snowden dwelled in technology jargon and played a little bit coy.

“More detail on how direct [the] NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want,” he said.

He also insisted the companies can buck the NSA’s demands if they view them as overreach, a step some firms, including Twitter, are reported to have done.

“They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply [sic] them from ethical obligation,” he wrote. “If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?”

One questioner asked whether he exaggerated his claim in his video interview with The Guardian that he could have accessed President Barack Obama’s personal communications from his desk at Booz Allen Hamilton if he had had Obama’s email address.

Technology experts have cast doubt on that capability, but Snowden said he stood by his claim.

Then in the same response, he pivoted to describe what he called “one very weak technical protection” Americans have from all-out snooping, a “near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points.” That filter, he said, is “constantly out of date” and set at “what is euphemistically referred to as the ‘widest allowable aperture.” In other words, the NSA is taking in as much as it can from Americans and even more from foreigners, he said.

“Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95 percent of the world instead of 100 percent,” he wrote. “Our founders did not write that ‘We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.”

Snowden also insisted he’s not a traitor and said it was “the highest honor” to be called one by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The chat was light on questions — and answers — about Snowden himself. He did, however, slam the mainstream media for their interest in his personal life and background rather than “the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”

He also clarifiedhis claim of a $200,000 salary, which Booz Allen Hamilton said was inaccurate. That figure, Snowden said, referred to his career high.